Ilitar and Haspophel. Three other mages I didn’t know. All dead. Zakimel or someone must’ve picked up my message, must’ve sent them ahead of me.
My fault.
But the others were still with me. The important ones. I could save them. I would save them. I had no idea what power he’d used to subdue them, but their breathing was regular, sounding all-too-comfortable in their gentle snoring.
“It’s b-been a very long day –“ I started.
He laughed, barking so loud I couldn’t continue. His five wight-magisters, arrayed behind him in a line, snapped out their own hollow, Netheric laughter as if to echo him.
“Can you shut the drop up, you stuck-up fool?” he spat. “Vaahn’s nails! Can you shut the drop up now?”
He lowered a demonic claw towards Xastur’s unprotected, sleeping face, resting it tenderly on the little boy’s cheek.
I shut up.
He’d thrown aside the table, the benches, and had piled their slumbering bodies atop one another, like he was stacking a fire, in criss-cross fashion – Xantaire and Orstrum on the bottom, then the twins across them, with Xastur spread-eagled over Jaid and Jaroan’s legs.
The foot-long, unclean-looking talon poised on Xastur’s soft flesh was so sharp, so malign in nature… if the heretic even so much as slipped… the child might die…
“Yeah, you sure got a lot of crummy books in here, champion. Not the interestin’ kind. Where’d you keep your spellbooks?”
I shrugged, not taking my eyes off his three huge talons.
He cocked his head, rolled his shoulders, and a little trickle of blood ran down the side of Xastur’s face.
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“Fine!” I gasped. “I have – is that why you’re here? My books? I can give –“
“I already told you why I was here. Try to keep up, fool. I’m here to do to you what you did to me.”
His barriers’ latticeworks were structurally perfect, the result of a sorcerer bent on his task to the exclusion of all else. He’d improved in his shieldcraft, since we last met.
I had no doubt, none at all, that he would be quite capable of killing them all before I could get to him, even if I brought everything I could call upon into the fray.
“I k-keep my s-spellbooks in th-th…”
He sighed, and I fell silent, cringing.
Zel. Zel, come back. I need you, Zelurra. B-bondswoman…
But it didn’t work, couldn’t work. She would never heed my summons again.
Never be there to save us, like she always had before.
Gilaela. She was my wild card. It might’ve been that she couldn’t do anything to the shields in her transformed state – but I had to try.
“Move that finger again,” he growled. “Move it, and I move mine.”
He did it anyway, slitting open Xastur’s face.
No no no no no no no…
I watched the blood trickle down past Xassy’s ear, and I slowly changed. Considering the enormity of the change, it was quick, actually, but it felt slow.
“You realise what happens if you kill them,” I heard my voice saying in a dead monotone.
“I die at your hands.” He barked laughter again, his chorus of wights following suit. “Do you think that bothers me? Does dying bother you? Really?” His chin dipped a fraction, as if he indicated my champion’s garb. “You thought you could just come out with your identity, right? You thought you could pay the price alone. But that’s never true, is it?”
I stopped myself mid-shrug, blinked away my tears and stared at him.
“You want to know? Really?” I caught myself sneering. “You say you want to teach me the meaning of loss? How did you get your powers, eh? Aren’t you like me? Aren’t we the same – weren’t we from the moment we –“
“Enough!” he roared. “We’re nothin’ alike! You killed her!”
“I have never,” I said, then choked.
‘Never killed anyone,’ I was going to say. But that wasn’t true, was it?
The magisters Everseer slew when I let her go.
The magisters here, right in front of me, victims of my self-centredness, Haspophel and Ilitar’s pale faces judging me.
Wyre and his cronies. Em’s hand dealt the stroke, but the malice in it was my own.
“You killed her,” he hissed with finality. “You must pay! The price is blood – always in blood!”
He brought back his claw with savage speed, strength, the motion a blur. The three rusty talons glinted.
There were unknown eldritches inside him. When he struck my family, he would likely kill them all in a single blow.
And there was nothing, nothing whatsoever I could do to stop him.